ISSUE: What is the value of treatment in early-stage (ES) cancer? Does it differ from that in advanced cancer, and does it vary across stakeholders? What impact does this have on timely access to treatments, and what can be done to improve reimbursement assessment?

OVERVIEW: Early detection and treatment can have a profound impact for patients, with the potential of cure in some cases. Whilst treatment of ES cancer can provide an opportunity for meaningful and durable clinical benefit, HTA can be quite challenging – due to the time it takes to measure overall survival, clinical studies usually rely on surrogate endpoints; moreover, the patient population tends to be larger, making the financial impact of the reimbursement decision more meaningful. These considerations often result in delayed access to innovative treatments, resulting in patients missing out on interventions that could change the course of their disease.

In addition, treatment of ES cancer can provide benefits that are not routinely used by decision-makers in subsidy decisions; for example, attributes such as value of hope, real option value, value of cure, ability to return to work, impact on carers and their family.

During this session, panellists will share their view on the value of treatment in ES cancer, linkage between early clinical data to projected OS benefit, and their view on the broader perspective of value capturing the human impact, societal impact, clinical impact, and economic impact. Differences in perspectives will be debated, and participants will be encouraged to offer their thoughts on what can be done to ensure that the benefits of ES treatments are appropriately valued alongside with ways to address uncertainty in decision-making, and ultimately, to improve patient access.

Each speaker will present for 10 minutes, with around 20 minutes for debate and questions.